I’ve passed many months seeing news and leaks about the Apex Legends Mobile. After the success of the battle royale that rose in 2019 and for a brief moment became a threat to Fortnite, the launch of a mobile version started to be considered. It took months of development, and we saw countless leaks on the web throughout the process. After three years after the console/PC game launch, probably due to the pandemic constraints, the mobile version finally arrived. Apex Legends Mobile reached for smartphones on May 17th, 2022 and apparently, it ended up as some sort of disaster for EA. The company announced earlier this year that it will be shutting down the servers for the mobile version. That date has finally come, and on May 1st, 2023, the game will be discontinued.
Apex Legends Mobile – The final hour
The reason for the shutdown of Apex Legends Mobile remains a mystery. Many players ended up lifting speculation about what went wrong. As per the developer, the game’s content production has been inadequate in terms of “quality, quantity, and release frequency”. In fact, the game failed to stand against the competition in the mobile segment. It was well-received by players with interesting gaming modes and legends. However, it did not find its place among PUBG Mobile, COD: Mobile, Fortnite, and FreeFire.
EA brought an update with the sad news on January 31. The company gave a 90-day period to experience the game’s remaining content, with all the in-app purchases being disabled. The game will be completely shut down on 1 May 2023 at 5 PM PST / 8 PM EST. For those in India, the game will go offline on May 2 2023 at 5:30 AM IST. So the next few hours will be the last for those who want to enjoy this mobile battle royale that never was.
It’s a sad story for a battle royale that tried to innovate in the mobile scene. The game, in fact, brought some interesting additions over its regular counterpart like the 3rd person mode that was born from the mobile version. Unfortunately, it’s hard for a new player to find its place in a crowded market. Also, we have to say that the long development cycle for the mobile version probably was one of the culprits for the failure of Apex Legends Mobile.
What explains this “disaster”?
The original game launched in 2019 and became a hit. In certain moments, it has overcome Fortnite as the most popular battle royale. We can even remember some funny stories from the game’s early days. However, time passed and Epic Games’ battle royale reclaimed its top position. Respawn’s battle royale reached stability after some constraints with the pace of content, but the hype ceased. That said, the mobile version lost the game’s great momentum. With a huge gap of three years, the launch of a mobile version did not have the same appeal it could have had.
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As per the reports, one of the primary reasons for the game’s end was the technical issues. The developers had challenges when trying to bring the game to mobile devices. The game had a vast amount of maps, weapons, Legends, and sophisticated gameplay mechanics. It was not too easy to port this to mobile devices. Hence, the developers had to make some big modifications to the game engine and infrastructure to make the mobile port possible. Further, the game required a huge amount of processing power, we know that the smartphone market is not only made of flagship devices. So if your device was not strong enough, the experience with the game would be poor.
Problematic development brought a port that was too heavy for the largest part of smartphones
We believe that one of the reasons that allow Free Fire to keep its supremacy is that it can easily run on basic phones. The fact that it runs fine on most mid-range devices is what makes this battle royale the dominant force of the mobile market. Getting back to Apex Legends Mobile, the game also lacked player interaction. As we’ve said the mobile release lost the game’s greatest momentum, however, there was still some expectation for the mobile port’s release. However, when the game launched it was more difficult than expected and the pace of new content was disappointing.
Despite the constraints, the game had a solid start with over 22 million downloads and over $13 million in revenue. Google and Apple have even named Apex Legends Mobile the best mobile game of 2022. The game had a brilliant start, but we believe that these numbers fell sharply once the hype ceased. Otherwise, the story would be different today. No one could guess that game would be a disaster, however, its early end points to this undeniable truth.
For now, it’s time to say goodbye to Apex Legends Mobile. We can still enjoy it on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch, and all other cloud-gaming services that support it. This failure on mobile certainly will enlighten some red alerts for companies that want to improve their presence on the mobile scene. Apparently, the mobile gaming market is tougher than it used to be in its first days.
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